Day 27: Frankie Fanatic awake and happy....

So before I tell you about Frankie, let me tell you about the 2nd greatest thing to happen in my life, bigger pants. I call them the Cinderella pants because there is only one place she wanted to be, that's the ballroom of course.  Frankie Fish has had a wonderful day. He has been wide eyed and happy the whole time we have been here. His oxygen is down to 3 liters at 40% and he seems to be handling it very well. His feeds are up to 7cc's an hour again. Our first visitor was Granny Sue. Strange woman, see the below picture. Gotta love cell phone cameras. She finally got to hold the boy and make all kind of weird noises and recite all the Dr. Seuss books by heart. Next was Uncle Jimmy Hogan, followed by Aunt Laurie. They brought us dinner which was wonderful. It was more like dinner and a show. Mitchell is quite the funny man. I am considering letting him write these from now on. After dinner we came up and I held Frankie Flounder for the rest of the evening as I read the news on my phone. I am writing this a little early this evening because I may have to run to Jeff city in the morning. Like I said last night, we were approved for medicaid premium health insure. It is called MO Healthnet. I spoke to the agent here at Children's this evening about it. It's goofy as all hell. We were approved for $174 a month for the first month, but we don't need that since Alex's health insurance covers that. The following month is $71 and the third month will be free since Alex will not be paid for that time off of work. By the time we sat down with the agent, it was 4:30 pm. She told me that the medicaid insurance wouldn't start until they receive the first payment. But here is the kicker, their programming is still MS-DOS based, they do not accept payment via phone, credit card, or any other present day currency. They can do direct withdraw, but that takes 30 days to set up. They only accept check. If I mail a check today, it wouldn't arrive until Monday at the earliest and then still need to processed. Monday Frankie Financial with be 1 month old and Alex's insurance will stop covering him. At 10K a day, we can't afford there to be any gap in coverage. I could not get a hold of MO Healthnet directly because I didn't get done with the agent here until after 5 and they were closed. So now I have to call first thing in the morning and more than likely drive them a payment to them in Jefferson City so there is no gap in coverage. Here is what is even more crazy, that if Frankie Funny gets approved for another type of medicaid for being "disabled", then it supersedes all of this and they automatically pay for all of it, but it takes 90 days before we figure that out. This is such last minute thing because our agent was sick and out of the office all last week. Oh well. It will be nice weather for a road trip.

"You wanna rests on my breasts?"

Day 26: Frankie Federal Sleeps, Bathes, and Sleeps Some More

Holy Moly it's getting tough to find F words to go with Frankie's name that I haven't used. Even harder to find ones that make sense. Frankie Fajita had an exciting morning. He got to hang out in a new rocker thingamajigger with a therapist this afternoon. He opened up about his childhood, the tough time he went through with a skin rash that made him look like Tony La Russa, and how he felt like he's tied down all the time.  Another new swing thing means we are really running out of real estate in this room. I wonder if Alex would get offended if I made her sit in the hall. His oxygen is down to 3 liters at 50%. His feeds are up to 5cc an hour. No more antibiotics and after speaking to the docs today, the verdict is still out on whether Frank and Beans beans are dropping or if it's a hernia. The boy was supposedly up all morning and slept through a ton of night visitors. My Dad came by and finally got to hold Frankie Forehead. Jaclyn came with him and gave holding Frank and Bake a chance. Which by the way, Jack Attack just turned 21 two minutes ago. Make sure to wish her a Happy Birthday. Naked Nate Helms also dropped in to interview me for a school paper. It was kind of trippy, he wrote a paper on interviewing me and not on the interview. Make sense? Thought so. Craig and Emily Ratliff also came by and visited. After everyone left, we gave Frankie Fiesta (must be a mexican themed night) a bath. He has been sawing logs since.  We find out what medicaid pricing we are covered under tomorrow. It will not be free since we make too much money (yeah right). It will either be $22, $71 or $174 a month and we will find out tomorrow. If I am not mistaken, when my nephew Sal was in the NICU for 9 days, it cost $68,000 (which was covered by insurance). That would mean $225,000 a month to be here. How crazy. I gave $185,000 for my house and I get to stay there a lot longer than a month. I am not into politics and all the bullshit, but I do find this to be ridiculous. Here are our options for medical coverage and thank God for medicaid. If we insure the boy under Alex's work, it would be $900 a month for a family plan. What your work offers is a group plan. Group plans carry a higher monthly rate because they accept everyone at the same monthly rate, whether they are 18 and heathly as a horse or 90 and dying of cancer. You don't realize this rate is higher because your work covers a portion of the premium. What I have is an independent plan since I am a small business owner. This plan is cheaper for me since I am young and healthy. Now if I was to get an independent plan on Frankie, he could not be denied coverage based on a pre-exhisting condition thanks to Obama. But they could do up to a 500% rate increase. Yes, 500%. So if a "normal and healthy" baby is $100-150 a month, then the Frankster would be $500-$750 a month. The mortgage on my first house was that much. I would go broke real quick. Isn't that a joke? My son, the ones the rich and healthy complain about because he would make government health care impossible. This little angel didn't do anything wrong, he was born this way and doesn't to deserve to be, or to put us, in the poor house. Maybe I should teach him to say "eh" first and then we wouldn't haven't to worry about health care. And we would have government provided health care and the rest of our wienies if it wasn't for World Wars. ( I do know that I can't believe everything I read)  See the following link as I step down from my soapbox now....

http://www.historyofcircumcision.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=category&sectionid=8&id=73

 Mama Said Knock You Out

 I'm The Greatest

 Boxing Poster

Day 25: Frankie Falsetto sings soprano a little longer....

Frankie Forthright has been up and down today. He hasn't been in a constant fuss, but a minor for a little while. We got here around 3:20 and the boy was normal, not happy or fussy, but right in the middle. As time passed, so did the boy's urine, and along came a diaper change. The spot in his groin where his testes were dropping from, we noticed it to be a little large. At first I thought nothing of it, I mean come on, he is a DiFranco. Well 1 father, 1 mother, 2 nurses, 1 Nano, 1 doctor and a surgeon later, it was decided that it was not a testicle, it is a hernia. So Frankie Frizzy is still missing the jewels. And, how long is this boy's intestines? For Christ sake, he has them in his omphalocele, in his abdomen, and now in his groin. I hope he never eats bad taco bell after a night of drinking. It'll be a week before he gets it out. But after many rubs to figure out if he had an olive or a sausage, he definitely was hurting. It took us about an hour to get him quiet, comfortable and asleep. He has slept well since. Either which way you look at it, rubbing the olives or the sausage is gonna hurt. The surgeons didn't seem worried, just said no squats for a while. They will just take care of it with the omphalocele surgery. Besides that, my father and my brother came up and visited for a while. I feel bad for Frankie's Nano, we told him he could hold Frankie, then put it off for a second to change a diaper, and then the whole cast of E.R. groped the boy. By the time that was done, we knew holding him wouldn't make him happy. Dad will get to tomorrow. Erin Cox brought us up some Texas Road House and met the boy. Insert your own Patrick Swayze joke here. That shit was fire, and feel free to ask Jessie, Alex's sister,  if you don't know what fire means. I haven't eaten like that since the last time Mikey cooked. Frankie Fumes is still on 4 Liters of Oxygen at a 50% mix. His feeds will increase 1 cc every 12 hrs again. He is up to 3cc an hour as I write this. So hopefully it will go better this time around. His oxygen saturation sits at 100% but they want to conquer feeding now. Also if anyone tries to get a hold of us when we are up here, this place is a black hole of cell service. As I type this at 12:20 am, my phone just beeped to tell me I had a message from my mother at 9:30. So to answer you question Mom, he is doing well, just new day, new issues.  And one more thing, for you older folks, pre technology age, I just went to photobucket to upload pictures. The young James Dean is 25 days old and we already have 303 pictures and 14 videos of him. At this pace, we will have 4423.8 pictures and 204.4 videos by his 1st birthday. Which also by then, we think he will be old enough for his first tattoo.

Day 24: Frankie Too Tummy Starts Eating Again

Day 24 of straight kickin' it with my young homie Franken Ice. Boy wears his diaper like children's hospital was in north county. Word. He started eating again today. 1 cc an hour. It takes 30 cc's to make an ounce. So, for those mathematically challenged, that's less than an ounce a day. I see no hot dog eating contests in Frankie Flashes future. He slept, he got bathed, and he slept some more. No news is good news people. At one point, Frankie Fastball got a hold of his feeding tube and completely pulled it out, see below in the Don King photo.  Since Frankie Fountain did pee on his dressing today, I got to change it. The omphalocele gets silvadene creme, then xeroform (which for a lack of better description is a vasoline infused gauze) and then regular gauze. Since liquid (read urine) can't penetrate the xeroform, I only had to change the outer gauze. Eventually we will be doing this at home. When the surgeons dropped by today on rounds, they said everything looked good but they haven't started to apply pressure to the omphalocele yet because they wanted his breathing, eating, and comfort level to be good first. We asked about when he would be paroled, all they said was "it'll be a while". I want him to be healthy, but at the same time, it would be nice to take him home so we can have a normal life again. My Mother dropped by this evening for a while to say hi. Besides that, this morning Alex and I went to see my nephews as it had been a while. Little Tino lost his belly, he looks so skinny and tall. Sal looks huge compared to our Frankie. But most of all, I couldn't get over how much little Tino looks likes my brother Tino when he was a young boy. I felt like I was little again playing with my brother, other than this time around, this Tino doesn't constantly wanna dress up like a girl.

Day 23: Frankie Fist is All Smiles and ZZZ's

Frankie Frost wears clothes. What? No more naked baby? That's right.  But Frankie Flounder's gown looks more like a toga since his one arm was out of it for his pic line. Toga! Toga! What else is no more? Well no more fussiness, no more temperatures, no more morphine (totally, at least not without a new script), and unfortunately no more feeds until tomorrow. We are also unsure of what amount they will start him with until tomorrow. The most eventful part of the night was probably his visitors. Second biggest event was sleeping in my arms instead of the bed. You see, if I type this blog or hold the boy, I am aloud to sit in the lazyboy. Otherwise Alex makes me stand in the corner. Not really, but the other chairs suck. We went to dinner with Janelle and Naked Nate Helms at Tom's Bar in the Central West End. Janelle had knitted Frankie Frumpy an awesome blanket, which reminds me of a rainbow fish. Even has his initials sewn on it. Jaclyn and Brandon came up too and saw the boy. Besides that, since Alex has started mooing in her sleep and Frankie Furnace hasn't been eating much, we have filled our shelf in the milk fridge. Looks like I will be perusing Craigslist for a deep freeze. I feel bad these are getting shorter and less entertaining, but that means Frankie Fury is doing better. He was weened back down to 4 liters of oxygen at 50%. He has taken that very well. His stats are still awesome. Surgery on the omphalocele is nothing we even discuss at this time, so 6 months to a year is surely where we will be at. I hope it will be done at 6-7 months so it doesn't interfere with his crawling/walking as I was walking around 8-9 months.   

Practicing Kung Fu

Kramer / Don King

Day 22: Frankie Fatigue Sleeps Like His Uncle Tino

Frankie is 3 weeks old!!!

With a face like that, no wonder the nurses called him an angel today. Frankie Swells went back on TPN IV nutrients so no mama's milk. He slept hard this morning, never setting off an alarm for anything. When we arrived around 3, the boy was hanging out in his swing. Got a little cranky so held him for a minute and put him back in his bed. He played for a little bit, but then was fast asleep. He slept all evening. Soundly. We have never seen his heart beat down in the 120-130, but that is were he was. We had to wake him up to give him a bath. His air is still way up at 5 liters at 50% but his stats are great. For some reason the surgeons never came by today so his omphalocele never got re-wrapped. We aren't very happy about this and I keep offering to do it ourselves, but the nurse tells us surgery is on their way. Its 12:15, I don't see it happening. Alex and I walked over to Pasta House in the CWE only to find it vacant. Story of our lives. Ate dinner at Culpeppers, was okay. Watched the movie Lost in Translation. It was in English. I speak English. I still don't get it.

P.S. Frankie has legs like his dad.